Most of the stuff about speed of different browsers are essentially myths. Fireox is apparently faster to reload a page if it is in the cache but it is pretty much irrelevant.
Rendering speed is usually the least significant speed bottleneck. The delivery speed of the information across the Internet is often the limit. However with the sheer number of consumers it is frequently the ability of the remote server to supply that information to the network. With a site like AOL this is likely the problem. The servers are simply unable to keep up with the demand. They respond say yes I'm here and then nothing in the way of content. The page does not time out but nor does it load.
The other problem is with web page coding standards not always adhered to by designers. Some won't even bother to check if their page works on anyhting but IE. My particular annoyance is with designers who make email links only work with Outlook rather than honouring the default email program on the computer. These people should not even be on the industry as they are ignoramuses.
Consequently Firefox does not always render pages properly.